Mini ‘how-to’ Bluetooth/Wifi combo for Raspberry PII recently purchased the Cirago USB Bluetooth/Wifi combo to use with my raspberry pi. All things considered, I am quite pleased. Being reasonably versed in google-fu, helped, of course. Since I want the freedom to do some mobile tinkering, I need to access the pi sans a lan. That, and my latest wild hair project […]

Stick’em with the pointy endSince I have been spending a great deal of my time playing in the field of 3D design and printing, I have only recently stumbled upon, and had time to read, “Privacy for Me and Not for Thee,” penned by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, a human rights activist whom I first encountered in the virtual world […]

Be Still my Bleeding Heart …“Secure web servers are the equivalent of heavy armored cars. The problem is, they are being used to transfer rolls of coins and checks written in crayon by people on park benches to merchants doing business in cardboard boxes from beneath highway bridges. Further, the roads are subject to random detours, anyone with a screwdriver […]

The Never-ending Privacy BattleThis brings me back to the Hundredpercent American. To some extent he is a pet of mine. I have always rather liked him, because he has some promising qualities. For instance, he has enormous hospitality. I used to feel personally complimented by the amazing warm-hearted hospitality showered on me by Americans. […] When I realized […]

The Many Sides of BitcoinPariah, darling, or somewhere in between. Bitcoin has continued to linger in the daily media spotlight since the shuttering of darknet’s black-market drug bazaar, Silk Road, and the subsequent announcement of the arrest of its alleged owner, Ross William Ulbricht (aka DPR), on October 2, 2013. Media mavens have long cast bitcoin as a sort […]

Cyber Jihadists“We’re facing a very great threat of loosely-coupled, organizational networks that increasingly rely on IT infrastructure to coordinate their movements and recruit young disenfranchised, apathetic guys as suicidal pawns in a sophisticated, dispersed movement. (…)” (AHM, Usenet, September 21, 2001)

Hacker GangsMeet Jim Script Kiddie (skiddie). He is the guy (usually in his early to mid teens) who comes into a hacker forum, asking inane questions like, “how can I be a hacker?” He also tends to over-indulge in “hacker speak” making him look pretty much like a moron to seasoned (and not so) computer netizens.

The New Old WarIn 1956, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover initiated a program, code-named COINTELPRO (counter intelligence program) ushering in what would become the mainstay for how intelligence communities dealt with domesitic affairs. The sole directive of this program was “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of various dissidents and their leaders.

The Sacred ExecutionerIn his book, “The Sacred Executioner,” Hyam Maccoby notes: “A figure in mythology that has received little attention is that of the Sacred Executioner. […] By taking the blame for the slaying, he is performing a great service to society, for not only does he perform the deed, but he takes upon himself the blame […]

Scripting AphroditesOn Wednesday, April 13, 2006, 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin was reported missing by her father. Investigators thought she may have been abducted by someone she met online. Oklahoma law enforcement suspected her abductor might be heading just across the border to Texas and requested Texas issue an Amber alert.

The term, “ageplay” has become synonymous with a form of BDSM role play where one individual (usually a sub) dons all aspects of a child (i.e., dress, demeanor, behavior) and the other (usually a dom) dons all aspects of an adult. This, however was not always the case. To better understand why there is such […]

In the fall of 2007, several large corporations were jumping on the Second Life bandwagon. By October, CBS announced that they would feature Second Life on their popular television series, CSI:NY, along with a launch of a role play. Watch the show! Solve the mystery in Second Life! Or so the story went.

If you do a quick search for “eCampus,” you will find articles wherein the writer enthusiastically proclaims, “these are the campuses of the future!” While eCourses come in a variety of forms, just how much do people learn, anyway? Moreover, how can students be measured beyond the standard regurgitation that is required for passing tests? […]

A friend recently pointed me to Prokofy Neva’s latest commentary regarding the revelation that Ray Kurzweil will be speaking at this year’s SLCC. Being an old-fart technophile, I will say this. Prokofy has some salient points that are well worth considering. Their comparison of Singularity to Fascism is also worth a read, by the way. […]

On Monday, August 21, 2006, a UK station aired the Cutting Edge: Cult Killer–a program exploring how one man’s abuse in a destructive cult culminated in a murder-suicide. That man was 29 year-old Richard Peter Rodriguez and the cult was the Children of God, founded by David Brandt Berg in 1968.

In August of 2006, a girl met a boy. Where? On myspace, of course. The teen had been contacted by the boy who claimed to have moved from Florida to nearby O’Fallon. Their Internet relationship blossomed over the next six weeks, and the girl was on cloud nine. But then, the proverbial hammer fell and […]

“Every era has its dangerous ideas. For millennia, the monotheistic religions have persecuted countless heresies, together with nuisances from science such as geocentrism, biblical archeology, and the theory of evolution. We can be thankful that the punishments have changed from torture and mutilation to the canceling of grants and the writing of vituperative reviews. But […]

It has been stated that tragedies bring out the best in us. They also bring out the worst. This seems especially so when the tragedy involves a child. Unlike adult victims however, child victims are generally shielded from the media spotlight. For several reasons, the least of which involves the basic premise that we, as […]

If you were to walk up to any stranger and ask if they could detect a lie, there is a high probability that you would receive an affirmative answer. Research however indicates that our ability to detect a lie is no better than chance. Still, we persist and in a sense the criminal justice system […]

The field of forensic psychology is generally about psychology and the legal system. There is however one area of which few may be aware. Forensic psychologist also consult in domains that have an international impact. Take the war on terrorism, for example.

Some time ago, I became engaged in a rather interesting discussion with… lets just call them a neophyte where JavaScript is concerned. In any event, my contention at the time was, JavaScript can be used to deliver malicious code due to its tight coupling with the DOM.

The Finders is another one of those new age cults whose history dates back to the late-1960s. Yes, starting cults was quite the “thang” back then. The thing is, there are a ton of them out there–more than most of you might realize. Of course, not every self-proclaimed group is necessarily a cult.

On Sunday, August 6, 2006, news broke in the blogsphere that AOL had released customer search data.[1] The (since removed) press release[2] from their research page[3] notes in part: Footnotes: AOL Just Did the Unthinkable – Boycott AOL? ¶ Exhibit B ¶ AOL Research ¶

Last weekend, the HOPE Number Six was held in the Big Apple. The HOPE convention–the east coast version of the Vegas hackers convention, defcon–was founded by Eric Gorden Corley, who goes by the nym, Emanuel Goldstein, after Orwell’s 1984 cult classic.